Always the Girl with the Plan
by sing-oldsongs
Summary: The first time she saw him he was standing on a picnic table under November-bare trees, holding up a red solo cup. "Tonight we do whatever the hell we want!" he screamed, like a boy making up a war, as faraway thunder rumbled in the gray sky. She thought, what a dramatic fool, but he knows his timing. Bellamy x Raven College AU. Former Finn x Raven.


**A/N** : Written this fall for The Hundred Rare Pairs Challenge on tumblr. A college AU set at my actual alma mater with the dorm and other location names changed. Mostly.

 **x**

I.

No, this isn't the sort of thing she usually does.

 _There's a patch of light, warming their skin._

Of course not.

 **x**

She's lying on her stomach with her face crushed into the corner of the bed, almost against the wall, one foot flung over the opposite edge. It's in the way of the sun. When she wakes, she'll groan, long and low, and stretch, long, pointing her toes, and turn over slowly and let out her breath. Her ceiling is very familiar and very plain but she often stares up at it as she studies, or works out problems in her head. When she wakes, she'll stretch her arms up to it. She'll wiggle each of her fingers. She'll follow a ritual that became routine without her even meaning it to, a quiet series of steps no one can take from her. She'll watch the light illuminating tiny flecks of dust.

 **x**

What she usually does is get up early—except on Sundays, when she allows herself to sleep in: a blissful resting, enjoyed in moderation. What she usually does is go on runs, when most of her friends are still sleeping. She returns to the dorms to shower while her hallmates stumble out of bed and groggily brush their teeth. She outlines the plan of her day in her head as she walks to class, or work, or the library on her less busy days.

Raven Reyes, always the girl with the plan, Finn used to say, as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, as he looked at her with that old soft-eyed gaze.

 **x**

II.

He said it to her in high school, too, which was when the plan started to solidify, no more vague I-hope-to-do-this thoughts like in childhood but a clear set of steps, and within her a drive to succeed gearing up. She wasn't optimistic—

(But were you happy?)

But she was determined, which was more important, an active emotion she still prefers to blind, passive expectation. She sat cross-legged on her bed. Finn was facing her, his position a mirror of hers and their knees touching, and their hands clasped. Her back was very straight and her chin slightly raised, her eyes closed; she felt a tension all the way through her and his hands holding hers so tightly, and his skin, and the sweat of his palms. She'd attached great meaning to that touch, how real and close he felt. Finn, her family, her home.

"We're going to get out of here," she said. "We're going to get into the same school. I'll declare a major in mechanical engineering. We'll get an apartment sophomore year, off campus. In four years, we'll graduate, and we'll move to California, and get jobs. And we will never, ever come back here, ever again."

(Where's _here_?)

(Oh, a little place. Lots of mountains, no people, and the mountains are better than the people, by far.)

"And we will never, ever come back here, ever again," Finn echoed. And she took a deep breath, and let it out, and opened her eyes to see that his were already open, and he was staring at her. The soft admiration in his gaze stirred her. He was always doing that, looking at her like that. The little smile almost-but-not-quite upturning his lips, the sweet affection he showed, it got to her every time.

 **x**

It was Finn's idea to put the plan—her plan, entirely _her_ plan—into words, which is grating because Finn himself was never one for thinking ahead. His is a pure live-in-the-moment spirit. His one wish was that they drive across the country after graduation, then settle on the West Coast, where he could learn to surf and it would never be winter. She'd built that bit into the plan for him. It's true, the images he conjured were nice: pleasant beach breezes and waves rolling in to wash over their bare toes, and palm trees—wouldn't she like to see a palm tree? They'd get a tiny little apartment and live practically on top of each other, like they'd lived their childhoods and their adolescent years practically on top of each other, some cheap place with a little kitchenette and a mattress on the floor, and she'd come home from her job tired and with grease on her fingers and he'd try, and probably fail, plenty of times, to cook something for them while she showered, and then they'd eat takeout sitting cross-legged on the floor instead, while the sun bled sunset colors through the window. Then an evening walk outside counting the stars.

He made it sound very real.

So her plan became part hard-clear goals and part soft-gentle watercolor fantasy, and seemed both attainable and beautiful all at once. They got into the same school and drove up together, the day before orientation, all of their things crammed into the back of one car. She hadn't wanted her mom to see her off. But his mother had hugged her so fiercely and for so long that she'd actually felt someone would miss her, which left a bittersweet taste on the back of her tongue.

 **x**

Yes, she was happy. During those first golden days of late summer, edging into fall, when the center of campus felt like the center of the universe, when the days were still long and the air still warm even at night—she was happy then. Yes, she romanticizes it. She wants to keep that feeling inside her always. Choosing a seat at the front of the room in her very first class, watching the other seats fill, people with interests like hers—then coming home to the awful dorm bed with the mattress that squeaked, and not caring that it squeaked, and thumbing through the pages of her textbooks, dog-eared and altered with previous owners' notes. She read more than she had to, devouring extra pages by the light of her bedside lamp after her roommate went to sleep. Sometimes she'd forget the hour and text Finn in the middle of the night. He must have been asleep, half the time. But he always texted back.

She stopped asking him to quiz her while they had sex, like she did when they were studying for the SATs, the APs, final exams. But she still found herself taking those moments to tell him— _I learned this, I heard this, have you ever thought of it_ _ **this**_ _way?_ —she couldn't help it, the thoughts just came to her, excited her, animated her. If he thought it was weird, he never said so. If it bothered him, he hid it well.

 **x**

(Wait—back up. I think there's another story missing here. Is that really how you studied for the SAT's?)

 **x**

It was great the first year. It—everything. And if Finn was a little more distant in the spring—maybe that was just what it felt like because she was distant, too, distracted, a little bit worn—maybe _she_ was the distant one. Not that she blames herself for anything. It's just that that time is blurred, like looking through a window at a landscape softened and distorted by spring rain. She remembers library marathons. And then Finn at the library door, with an iced coffee, an invitation to an outdoor movie, his arm around her waist like there was no gap between them, and never had been, and then poking off her shoes so she could feel blades of grass against her soles. She remembers too many half-plans. Getting to the movie late. Not-quite-finals road trip to a club the next town over that never quite got off the ground, a sort of fractured feeling all at the time, and later, a late night eating omelets in the cafeteria, with her books under her elbow and Finn's hand on her knee, listening to Jasper and Monty debating, wondering idly if they were high.

Her exams, she doesn't remember at all.

Finn helped her box up her stuff at the end of the year. When she'd moved in, she'd assumed it would be her first and only year in the crowded, loud dorms. She'd assumed she'd hate them. She'd even had the idle fantasy or two, of the sort of place she and Finn might find, not too far from campus, a sanctuary for her work, and his—they could put his sculptures on display—her thoughts influenced, maybe, a little, by his old California fantasy. By the end of the year, spring about to become summer and the world closing down and opening up again all at once, all those thoughts seemed faded and old, unreal. They seemed to come from a lifetime ago. The last time they'd talked about the apartment was in April, when he'd admitted he'd made plans to room with a guy he'd met in one of his English classes, and she'd just shrugged: she could get a single next year. That would be fine. She and Finn would have years to live together, after all—and the campus was small, they saw each other all the time, and she wanted to stay at the center of it, she did—that's what she believed.

(You have a blind spot about him, don't you?)

All of it, sincerely. Only some of it now, obviously. But she didn't know about Clarke then, and Finn will still insist there was "nothing to know" yet anyway. Not _yet_. They'd met but nothing had happened.

(Do you believe that?)

 **x**

(Raven, do you?)

 **x**

That summer, they had internships in different cities. They were on Skype together most nights—in June at least—less often later—but something felt different. She didn't think about it in these terms then, she didn't want to, she didn't want to put her finger on it. But she found distractions. She worked a lot, took on extra projects, _excelled_ , and when he texted, she begged off: I'm tired tonight, it's been a long day. For a while, he thought she was unhappy. _You'll get a better job next year._ But it wasn't unhappiness, only emptiness, uneasiness, something tipping and stumbling beneath the bright electricity of the day-to-day, something she could ignore and didn't dare to name, an uncertainty. Worse: an uncertainty about _Finn_ , the constant, solid, center upon which she'd built her dangerously indefinite life.

He was happy, though, and that was obvious. And one night he let her name slip— _I'm so glad Clarke told me about this place_ —and it jarred something inside her. Her reaction was irrational, totally irrational. Clarke: just a name, just a girl he might have mentioned once or twice. They'd had a class together or something, right, last year? _Yeah, yeah_. But he was evasive, and torn, like he wanted to talk about her but didn't want Raven to hear some secret tone in his voice, see some fleeting expression in his face, that might reveal too much. That's what she thinks now. But at the time she felt only a vague nausea, as if that constant threatening uncertainty were rolling up and taking over. She couldn't have that, so she changed the subject before he had a chance. And she didn't ask who Clarke was. She didn't really want to know.

 **x**

She met Clarke in the fall, during their first dinner back at campus, and by then there was something to know. Something she could not avoid knowing. Clarke: beautiful, blonde, pre-med, who liked to talk about all that art stuff Finn liked— _that's how we met! Art class!_ —who had all these secret jokes with him, secret things only they knew. Turned out they'd spent the summer together. Funny how Raven didn't know. They sat next to each other, Raven across from them, watching as if a frame were forming around them, setting them apart from the crowd of students and the late summer late sunset outside.

What happened after was messy and complicated, but it shouldn't have been, because when she saw the way Clarke touched Finn's arm and the way Finn smiled at her, and then looked down, and then looked up again, drawn to her, that was all Raven needed to know. As clear as a confession.

With Clarke in the basement of Wallace dorm two weeks later, searching for a dolly for one of Clarke's events—she was big on planning events—pawing through old boxes abandoned by now-graduates, and her back to Clarke, she heard: "I need to talk to you about what happened with Finn."

"You really don't _need_ to talk about anything." She almost pulled a box of old VHS tapes on her head, in her distraction, and when Clarke caught them instead it made her breath catch and restart. She did not want to think about this. She did not want to be this close. Her eyes narrowed and she turned, and Clarke took the box from her and set it down at their feet.

"I didn't think you two were still together," Clarke said. "It's totally over now, I promise."

"I know."

She'd set her expression, a slight narrowing of her eyes, a certain thinness to her mouth, and even her shoulders, her feet, all positioned to say _I know_ as in _because he's still mine_ but even then it felt a bit like a costume, like she was just a child pretending, because nothing really fit and nothing was really true. She wasn't going to fight over a boy, not even this boy—

(I would have dropped his ass at the first sign of trouble.)

This boy who'd been everything, family, partner, future, for longer than she could say.

 **x**

Mono made the rounds of campus the week before October break. Finn, blessed with immunity, brought her soup and bottles of water, read to her from her textbooks so she wouldn't fall behind in class, held her hand as she slept. Looked at her with that sad, worried, puppy dog look. For a while in her delirium, the world became very small, and she thought about nothing, but let vague sensations wash over her.

When she started to feel better, she asked if Clarke was sick.

He smiled a little—just from hearing the name, she assumed, and so she looked away at the white wall of the dorm, a patch of dying sunlight forming a slanting bright rectangle there. "A little," he answered. "But mostly she walked right through it."

"Sounds like her," Raven mumbled, her voice rough and weak.

Finn pretended he didn't know what that meant.

"I just can't help thinking, that if she was this sick, you'd be taking care of her right now," she said, running the back of one nail through the rectangle of light, then forcing herself to look at him. That was what a brave person would do: look him in the eye. "You haven't really been here in a long time."

He said her name in a sad way, tinged with defiance, but he had enough pride not to argue.

 **x**

She started going to the parties in November. (Yeah, I know—they're not really your thing though, right?) No, they'd never appealed to her: too loud, too many uncertain people doing too many uncertain things all at once.

(You mean dancing and drinking?)

And looking for someone to hook up with, as far as she could tell. That wasn't the sort of thing she usually did. But she needed to get Finn out of her head. It made her stomach clench and her skin itch just to think of him with someone else, and she, alone, thinking of him when she shouldn't—

For a while, a short while, maybe a day, she'd thought perhaps she'd burn all the bridges. She'd give him back all his things—not just the necklace he'd made for her, which of course she could not keep; giving it back was the only way they'd both know it was over—and she'd erase his number from her phone, and she'd make sure to keep her distance if they ended up at dinner together or found themselves in the same class. A slash and burn of everything. A salting of the earth.

The idea was appealing, to a part of her at least. But it wasn't realistic: they had too many friends in common, and the campus was too small. It wasn't what she wanted either, to pretend as if he didn't exist. She'd miss him in a day. They were still family, much as that hurt.

She took on extra work study hours. She made finely detailed final exam notes and asked for extra credit projects she knew she didn't need. And she started going to these parties, first the strange chemistry and comp sci nerd parties Jasper and Monty invited her to, and then more undiscriminating gatherings, out in the Ark Apartments off campus, where the seniors lived. She knew a few people. Not very many, and that was just perfect; that was what she wanted.

(Wait, I know the rest of this story. You ended up at the apartment of a handsome History major with excellent taste in guests and felt immediately and overpoweringly attracted to him?)

 **x**

III.

She's lying on her side with her body curled around a pillow, and her back pressed up against something warm and solid but soft, too, warm like humans are, solid and soft like humans are. There's an arm around her stomach and someone's nose pressed against the back of her neck. When she wakes, she'll tense. She'll forget for a moment what's happened and who this is, because it isn't Finn; there is someone with her and he isn't Finn. She won't want to move. She'll let her eyes wander up the wall and toward the ceiling, her familiar wall, her familiar college-issue lumpy-mattress bed: she's home.

And behind her, okay, it's come back to her now. Bellamy Blake.

Handsome History major with freckles across his nose and cheeks, most visible up close. The first time she saw him he was standing on a picnic table under November-bare trees, holding up a red solo cup. "Tonight we do whatever the hell we want!" he screamed, like a boy making up a war, as faraway thunder rumbled in the gray sky. She thought, what a dramatic fool, but he knows his timing.

She introduced herself as soon as he got his feet back on the ground.

He smiled like he thought she was bold—or maybe he was smiling because he thought she was impressed with him, so she let him know right away that wasn't true.

"Whatever the hell we want, huh? And what's that supposed to mean?"

The music was loud even outside. They had to stand close together, and what she wanted was his hands on her hips. He might have known as much.

"It means tonight, no rules. Everyone needs to live that way sometimes, right?"

She flicked her gaze down, then back up, making sure he knew she'd taken him all in and wasn't letting go. She thought she knew what type of boy this was, arrogant, fleeting, an every-night-is-our-night-and-no-rules sort of asshole, and he seemed like a good, like an excellent, idea. She nodded and said, "Yeah, I think that's true."

 **x**

By the end of the night, she knew how he kissed and that he could lift her right up off the ground, and she knew what it felt like to have her back against a wall and her legs around his waist. She knew what his bedroom looked like in the half-dark.

What surprised her, the only thing: after she grabbed her shoes, she turned back to check the time, and she caught sight of his face by chance. He was watching her with his mouth just slightly open and his expression clear and honest, as if he dearly wanted her to stay.

She turned her back and laced up her boots.

 **x**

There was a second night, at a party just before exam week; she'd come just to see if she'd see him again, but he was the one who found her, spinning her around while she was staring between shoulders in a too-crowded room, and then taking her hands still in their brown fingerless gloves. He didn't ask her to talk. She still wasn't ready to talk.

 **x**

She started running into him on campus after winter break. Once, inexplicably and awkwardly, in the cafeteria in the morning, getting coffee, at an hour when almost no one was awake. They waved and she pretended her heart wasn't pounding. Her heart had no reason to pound. Once at a history department lecture: he was in the front row; she sat in the back and wondered, in what she liked to think was an offhand way, if he'd noticed her. Once at a show by a campus band that Jasper had told her _wasn't half bad_. They were terrible. She lost track of Jasper after the first hour, and she would have left, but—

"What do you think?" Bellamy asked her, suddenly so close, bending down to speak in her ear over the noise. His hand was on her hip, but they each pretended it was not.

"They're awful!" she called up toward his ear.

He laughed. "The guitarist is my roommate—Miller? I think you—probably didn't meet him, actually."

She hadn't. She hadn't met anyone at those parties but him. "No," she answered. "I didn't get around to it. Did you promise him you'd listen to the whole set?"

She caught him looking at her, as if trying to decide, taking a second or two to decide, if she meant what he thought she meant. Then he shook his head. "No. Let's go."

 **x**

Her dorm was closer, so that's where she led him, crunching over thin February snow, breath misting out into the clear, sharp air. They'd never been alone like this before, in a space so open and so empty, silence and space between them. She kept wondering if there was something obvious she should be saying, too aware that he was watching her as she shrugged her shoulders up against her ears.

When they got to the dorm, he leaned against the brick next to the doorway as she took out her ID card to let them in. "None of my roommates know you," he said suddenly. "How did you end up at our party last year, again?"

"Ummmmmm," she answered, pushing the door open with her shoulder and holding it open for him. "I _might_ have just wandered in. You should know your security sucked."

"Guess we'll have to splurge on a bouncer next time, then," he said. He followed her and then took her hand, as if he'd been waiting for just this moment, and pulled her close and pushed her back, and kissed her with her back against the side of the staircase. When he pulled away she realized her hand was fisted in his shirt.

"Do you really think a bouncer would have stopped me?"

 **x**

Never had the stairs to the fourth floor seemed so long, as she climbed them knowing he was just a step behind. "I live in the Annex," she said, for no reason, as she pushed open the last door to the thin little back hallway, with its collection of eight small single rooms. Usually cozy, just then it was enough to cause claustrophobia, almost a sense of embarrassment as she unlocked her door and let him in, this last barrier to this last private space. He looked around as if the place actually interested him. She sat down on the bed and took of her coat. It suddenly occurred to her that he might want to talk, and that she might be okay with talking, this time.

"Is this a robot?"

She'd been taking off her boots, and the question first startled her, then made her laugh: how strange it was, how out of nowhere. "It's actually just a robotic hand," she said, unable not to grin, and kicked off a boot in his direction.

He sat down at her desk chair, frowning as he stared at the hand-shaped collection of wires, the mechanical skeleton, his head tilted and almost too close, as if he wanted to touch. "I thought you were a sophomore?"

"I am. It's not a thesis project, it's just…" She shrugged and leaned back against the wall, drawing her heels up onto the bed. "A side thing I'm working on."

"A side thing?" he repeated, eyebrows rising. He cocked his thumb at it. "This needs a more impressive title than 'side thing.'"

Her smile became easier, prouder, and she straightened her back, tilted up her chin. "It's just the beginning."

"And now you sound prouder and considerably more dangerous. What's the rest? A fully functioning robot? A robot army? World domination?"

"I think it's a bit too soon to tell you that."

 _Too soon_.

She didn't want to look at him anymore; his gaze was too steady, and there was something in it she couldn't read. As she turned away, she heard him ask, "Will you tell me about it tomorrow?"

What she heard was: _Can I stay?_ And beneath that, maybe _Will you tell me everything?_

 **x**

She turns around carefully, wondering if he's a light sleeper, if he'll startle easy. He doesn't. He barely twitches when she runs one gentle finger down the slope of his nose and down the ridges of his lips. Because this makes her feel brave, she whispers, "I'm glad you're still here."

"Me too," a sleep deep voice rumbles, and she jumps.

 **x**

She climbs on top of him and pulls the blanket over them, and kisses him. It feels a bit silly and a bit sweet. She should be scared by the intimacy of this, but she pushes that bit of fear down; she says she'll trust this. She will trust her instinct, and she will trust him.

 **x**

She's looking down at him, his hair mussed and a bit of it standing out strangely to the right, dark against her white pillowcase, not yet familiar in the familiar background of her room. She's taking him in, not realizing how long she's been silent, when he asks, "So why did you really come to that party?"

She tilts her head. There are too many answers. There is only one long and complicated answer. He doesn't ask again, just waits. After a moment, he reaches up and tucks a stand of hair behind her ear. Which makes her smile.

"The short answers is so I could do whatever the hell I wanted. And forget."

He looks at her, curious, smiles but doesn't laugh. "And what's the long answer? What were you forgetting?"

"You really want to know?"

"As much as you'll tell me."

And this is how she ends up telling him everything.


End file.
